Inspiration: DIY Food Projects

Remember this post about whether it's more cost-effective to make or buy various pantry staples? Well, we've been conducting a little experiment of our own and have been making everything at home, from bread to yogurt to granola to dog treats. It takes a lot of work, but is very fulfilling in the end. And yet, we're wondering... Are we doing the real green thing here?

When it comes to food (and it's not to say we don't cave once in a while), in the last six months, we've spent a good portion of our free time learning some urban homesteading tricks from books like R.J. Ruppenthal's Fresh Food from Small Spaces and cookbooks like How to Cook Everything or the ubiquitous Joy of Cooking. Suffice it to say, we have made our small apartment kitchen work pretty hard.

Back to the question at hand: Is it a green move? We think so.

Sure, we're putting more energy from the oven into endeavors at home; but we're minimizing the food miles, production costs, and carbon footprint we'd otherwise create if we bought ready-made items.

We've cut down on packaging, but more so, we're slowly stepping away from the corporate food system (thanks to Michael Pollan's Omivore's Dilemma for introducing us to that idea). In years to come, we hope that all of our ingredients are local--but for now we are happy having organic wheat flour from states away, and fair-trade raw sugar from south of the border.

So what do you think? Is it too drastic to try and be 100% homemade, or are we on the right track?

Read more about our journey toward self-sustainability and catch all of our homesteading tips at The Sustainable Diet.